Whispers of The East
by SteampunkLoki
Summary: Monkey has never been one to run but when Trip needs his help to guide the freed slaves, he has trouble abandoning the safety of staying alone to take of responsibilities he never wanted. When fate only drives the stakes higher, will he vanish once more?
1. Intoduction

"Hey Trip, looks like we found a way to get them to stop cowering and come over here." He scratched behind one ear while casting the odd glance over the edge of the rocky outcrop to see even more of the black-clad wanderers than before. Monkey had been eager to leave Pyramid as soon as possible, and with a reluctant Trip on his back.

She was a master at giving the silent treatment.

He leaned forward to attempt to make her out through the haze of the campfire. "They see fire, smell food and hear talking and suddenly we've got a whole new pack of buddies."

The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for the safety of these people. He only just barely tolerated being Trip's protector. She whined and ignored his advice and turned even the smallest and most simple tasks into hours upon hours of nightmarish work.

He loved her.

"Take down the stupid wall." She mumbled. "So you can stop mocking them and actually help."

"Are you crazy? There's gotta be hundreds-"

"Thousands."

"... There's gotta be hundreds of them out there, we'll be swarmed. They can figure out how to fend for themselves for a bit, don't you think so?"

"No; I don't think so." She growled, rising with a flurry of sand around her feet.

Monkey held her gaze in silence. It was a struggle but he stayed calm until she lost confidence and sat down again, this time facing away from him and unpacking one of the sleeping bags with an irritated urgency. When the lack of conversation got on her nerves once again, she whipped around and fixed him with an accusing glare. "In the morning I'm heading straight back home to give these poor people a chance and I don't care if you decide to run off and be alone for the rest of your stubborn life."

"At least I'll be able to sleep without one of your lectures on how selfish I am." He light-heartedly remarked, which effectively angered Trip past the brink of speechlessness.

"I do _not_ lecture you on how selfish you are!" she argued. "I'm just telling you that those people need help, I plan to give it to them and I don't care if you help or not."

"Trip, of course I'm gonna help you." Monkey offered her a rare hint of a smile.

But it was lost in the darkness.

Trip twitched, stuck between apologising and not backing down. So, instead, she fixed him with an icy glare and cleared herself a space to sleep. He wouldn't be getting another word out of her until morning. Sleep came strangely easy for her.

Monkey himself didn't let down his guard until the small gatherings of slaves were still in the small sandstorm. They had their own shelter –for now- and somehow their own fires. Nobody had taken off their masks or their headbands. He doubted many had spoken, either. Only one of two stood out from the rest. Mostly because they kept sneaking glances over to Trip and Monkey's small camp and would tear their gaze away whenever Monkey looked over, staring at the sand as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. He'd have fun scaring them off if they got too close in the night. He needed something to smash up to some degree after the past few days. He remembered the time his last companion taught him how to relax and channel 'negative energy' out some other way than mindless violence. He'd forgotten how to do it, though, as soon as he found himself alone again and there was nobody to snap at him whenever he went in search of mechs.

He always forgot the knowledge people shared with him as soon as they decided to leave. Some wanted to stay in the small communities they traded in. Others ran off in the middle of the night back to wherever they thought was safe. Like his parents.

_They died in a mech attack when I was a kid..._

Why did she have to ask so many questions when he really didn't want to talk to her? Everyone else was given the true story... but then again, everyone else travelled with him without the aid of a slave headband and a threat of death. He just wanted all conversation with her to be over quickly; it wasn't his fault the first thing he could think of was that.

It was typical that the one person he felt this way about was the one person he lied to. And now she lost her family in this very same way. Life just got more and more difficult the easier he tried to make it.

"Monkey... please sleep. It's late."

He felt almost relieved to hear her.

"I knew you were awk-"

"Go to sleep." She hissed from her sleeping bag. "... please."

"Night Trip."

It was almost inaudible, but she wished him pleasant dreams.

_Short, yes, but as a small introduction I hope it'll do. I'm not 100% sure where I'm taking this story in the end but it will be long and I'll avoid inserting my own characters for as long as possible. _

_~Kay_


	2. Bridges

Monkey was awake the moment the intruder dropped over the fence and made their foolish way towards where Trip slept. They hardly took caution as they stumbled haphazardly over the camp, taking no notice of the girl's guardian. He watched from the partial shadow until the unlucky survivor had stepped just within reach. Swiftly, Monkey felled the man with a wide sweep of his staff and shot up to pin the downed unfortunate to the dusty ground. If he made so much as one wrong move, the business end of the staff would be putting a plasma blast through his torso.

"How the hell did you get in?" Monkey roared, perhaps a tad more worked up than he should have been, but it was either interrogate this man or wander out recklessly in search of mechs to unleash his frustrations on. "How?" He asked once again when his previous question was answered with an unintelligible gurgle from beneath the mask.

Rewarded with very little for his efforts, he surveyed the area for any clues and to check that Trip was unharmed. She wasn't, just looking on in drowsy confusion and horror. Upon seeing her, the intruder began to struggle to get her attention, gesturing to Monkey with urgency and then to the section of sheet-iron wall he had dropped from.

A section of wall which happened to be connected to an overlooking rock formation by a series of other sheets he'd pulled from the outer wall layers.

A series of makeshift bridges.

Ah shit.

"Mark..." Trip breathed from behind, scrabbling up to Monkey and tugging his arm away with what he couldn't figure out as anger towards himself or concern for... _Mark_. "Oh my gosh, you're alive? Is anyone else alive?"

Mark scrambled away from Monkey the first chance he got and pulled himself uneasily to his still shaking feet. All that he could tell about the man's appearance was that he was only barely taller than Trip herself and had a very slight build. He looked typical of someone who was fabled to have quite a disturbingly strong liking for bridges.

Like someone Monkey wanted to drop kick back over the damn wall.

It took a few moments of coughing and spluttering before Mark finally cleared his throat to speak, and then chose not to in favour of giving Monkey a silent glare. Or at least he assumed it was a glare; there was little room for expression under the slave mask. Possibly the only thing that both men would understand was how difficult it was to remove one of the masks even when they were deactivated.

The stony silence reigned for a full minute before Trip busied herself with slowly pulling apart the different bindings keeping the mask in place. Still, nobody spoke.

"No bleeding... your eyes both seem to be working fine... you're pale but that's just from lack of sunlight... I think." She rambled on and on and on while the mysterious Mark was revealed bit by bit. The first thing to be uncovered was the back of his head – which was the easiest part of the contraption to disassemble – and Monkey was amused to find that his hair was dyed to the same reddish hue as Trip's was. Some strands were adorned with braids and small items. Neither he nor Trip laughed when Monkey cracked a few jokes about the feminine nature of it.

Mark's skin was lighter – like that of someone who spent their time indoors and taking a more tactical approach to survival – and riddled with almost invisible freckles. By the time Trip had the rest of the mask off, he was already making quiet complaints about getting sunburn. He sounded younger than he appeared and went from what Monkey thought of as immature complaints to a goofy smile and friendly banter with Trip when he could finally see his surroundings clearly.

Mark didn't have the 'intellectual' sort of face that Monkey had expected, but there was something about that he had seen before. Compared to the many predictions, he was startlingly normal. He was square-featured and accompanied every word he spoke with an odd gesture of his hands. He looked old enough to be Trip's uncle but, without knowing the age of either of them, he had to assume he wasn't. No resemblance at all. Nothing but an eerily strong sense that this wasn't their first meeting...

"I think by now I can safely guess you escape from your slave ship. May I ask how you managed to make it this far? Not that I doubt you I just..."

"You just remember the time I volunteered to spend the night in one of the desert outposts and couldn't even get there without managing to trip over a small sand dune and break my arm? You had to carry me all the way back."

"Yes... exactly." He coughed. "So, going back to my initial question..."

Monkey was zoned back into the conversation when Trip squeezed his arm and offered him a grateful smile. It was almost enough to convince him to be fairly nice towards Mark.

"I had a lot of help. This is Monkey, and I owe my life to him."

It was the best thing he'd heard all day. And it finally gave him a chance to get between Trip and Mark to move everyone along and, hopefully, convince the bridge enthusiast to head down a different path. It was hard enough work forging a friendship with Trip, he wasn't about to do it all again at the risk of losing her at the same time. She couldn't make the same mistake her people made by trying to set up yet another huge community. Mechs weren't the only threat and, in comparison to the clans of his homeland, they were hardly a challenge either.

But they would tear her dreams to shreds.

"Trip." He said, urgently and quietly. "If we don't set off before midday-"

"We have hours before then, and we'd be better off active at night." Mark interrupted. "I'm surprised you haven't been doing just that; you appear to be a travelled man yourself." He gave Monkey a severe look over, his gaze hovering over the areas of his skin where the flesh had been burned to form the unexplained tattoos. They had begun to fade now that he spent his days in this brighter area of the continent. "And I have always been under the impression that your clan preferred to work at night anyway."

"Yeah, well, that was before everyone died." He growled in response. It wasn't a surprise that Mark was aware of his clan, but surely the man knew there were very few of them remaining.

"Must have been recent: I came across a settlement not too long ago. I recognise your tattoos from the banners."

And now Monkey remembered exactly where he'd seen him before...

_Fuck you_, he thought as Trip raised a brow, _fuck you and your bridges._

He angled his staff towards Mark's head once again and spoke in a low voice.

"My people died when I was a kid, okay? You musta been smoking some messed up stuff to see anything like that."

"Monkey! Mark! For god's sake, is it that hard to calm down?" she gave them both a gentle but firm shove and pointed to the shelter. "In the shade. Now."

Monkey made to obey her as Mark did, but swiftly turned on his heel and vaulted over the wall. A walk. A walk would be good.

_Did it get a wee bit longer? I think it did~ _

_This ending just got worse and worse the further I got with it o.o_


	3. Yes or No

He bet his life one of his past companions would be busy calling him the world's biggest twat if they were still there. He could name at least four, and one who would accompany the verbal lecture with a few punches to the upper arm to help put her point across.

"_Where the hell were you when they were handing out the ability to be rational? Where were you when they were handing out brains?"_

They were insults but they were affectionate insults. Reminded him of the way he and Trip would poke fun at each other to disguise the fact that they were in complete awe of their new friend. Or at least he thought of it that way; the mysterious Trip probably meant it. But in a kind way. She always meant it in a kind way.

"_Sometimes you're such a jerk I can't help but sit back for a minute and smile because I still bloody adore you."_

That was his favourite. One of Trip's, actually, when he laughed at her inability to pull herself up into a ledge and took his time rushing to her aid as usual. She thanked him with a torrent of screeching but when the terror subsided she admitted that it was rather funny.

"_If I ever die, promise to stop living like this? I know you, Monkey, you'll pretend you're fine with being alone and just move to a different place so nothing reminds you of me. Go back to your village and stay there. I'm sure they miss you."_

Ironically, the person who made him promise such a thing was killed less than a week after. And shamefully, it took him only hours after the crossfire to break the promise and find himself – as a result of his grief and recklessness - on a slave ship en route to Pyramid. He was still torn about his decision, but he was sure his recent achievement would keep his conscience from bringing it back up again... Hopefully...

In all honesty he knew it took very little for someone to work their way under his skin and he became stupidly attached to anyone who could argue him into a hole so he'd let them come along on a simple salvage outing. Pretty soon they would be as close as lifelong friends and he wanted to show them the world outside the sheltered community they lived in. Either they blindly sealed their own fate or outgrew him and left when his guard was down.

Like _her._

The betrayed, spiteful part of him hoped she'd run into a fatal trap or ambush. That stupid, manipulative witch... he would have seen it coming from the start but she was just too sneaky. All the talk of love and everything they shared and everything he risked for her and everything he thought they could have had, everything they did have.

And then there came the moment he woke from the most blissful slumber of his life to find it was all gone. Not just gone, taken. By _her. _

It was irritating how the memory wanted to bug him now. Now? Why now? Particularly this one moment. It liked moments when the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach would serve to severely endanger him. Like in the heat of the battle when he expected to glance over his shoulder and see not just a helpless companion but a fierce warrior tearing apart mechs with a graceful flair that stuck him dumb. But _she_ was never there, and he'd be knocked back into reality by a blow from his opponents.

Or when he sat awake at night and pretended not be freezing and tired. He expected – and secretly yearned for- that same lightly scolding tone and a warm blanket draped around his shoulders before he was assured they were safe and he could stop working himself up. _She_ was the one person he ever trusted in that way. Not just because _she_ knew this dark world as well as he did. _She_ gave him something to come back to, something which made him feel safer than the walls and weapons and everything else he set up.

"_Fuck you!"_

He slipped from his perch, roared the obscenity and fell to the shallow canyon floor. He was up again before the cloud of dust had even cleared and scrambling up the wall of footholds to try again. And again. And again. It wasn't even a difficult jump. These stupid thoughts made it impossible. Why the hell did they? How could one little thing render him completely unable to grab hold of a small ledge?

Think of Mark. Think of Mark and his stupid bridges and how he really, really needed to be shoved off one somewhere in the near future. The nearer the better. As soon as he got back sounded great.

It worked for a few minutes while Monkey ascended to the top of the windswept rock he'd had his eye on. There was no small gathering of survivors to spoil the solitude or view.

But there was, to his surprise, a poker-faced redhead pretending she hadn't beaten him by a few seconds and was still yet to catch her breath. Thankfully Mark was nowhere to be seen.

"You took your time." She breathed, posed with her legs dangling over the edge. She didn't make any sort of eye contact and mumbled awkwardly. "I saw you heading this way and thought I could do that thing where I walk up on you from behind and say 'Hey' and-"

"Trip?"

"Hmm?"

"Shush a sec, will ya?"

He sat beside her, slouched as always and keeping the contact void between them.

She managed to stay silent for almost exactly ten minutes.

"I'm sorry you two don't get along. Well... I'm not, because it isn't my fault and I thought you guys would be great friends... seeing as neither of you like anybody else I thought maybe it'd be an opposites attract sort of thing. Not in a romantic way but in a friendship way-"

"Do you ever stop to breathe? Or consider what you're gonna say?" he asked, silencing her for another few minutes. He hoped his small, slightly out of character smile was visible or she'd think he actually wanted her to shut up.

"I don't want you to be the difficult one."

"Hey! He started on me first."

"It sounded like he was accusing you of lying..."

"Exactly!"

"Did you?"

He frowned.

"Don't change the subject."

"I'm _not. _I'm serious. I don't care about the details and you don't even have to tell me what you lied about... for now." She stopped herself before she began yet another rambling streak, shifting her weight back onto the palms of her hands. This slow rocking back and forth between postures was a nervous tick of hers.

"Why... why does it even matter?" he desperately wanted to avoid this conversation. He'd have it when things weren't so strange and when he could be confident that it was only the two of them to talk things over. No meddling Mark.

"Give me a yes or no and we won't mention it again. Agree?"

"Yes."

"... was that a yes as in 'Yes, I lied' or 'Yes-'"

He gently clamped a hand over her mouth in search of a little peace. It was a bad idea; she dealt with this obstruction by biting. Hard.

"Damnit, Trip!" he hissed and whipped his hand away. "I... I meant the first thing." He muttered. "But it doesn't matter! Does it?"

She opened her mouth to say something but took a few seconds to make a final decision before staying quiet. Unlike the other times, he didn't like this awkward silence. He used silence to think and this silence was screwing with his head.

"I get it, you wanna trust me."

Trip nodded, still silent.

"And ya don't already?"

"Pretty hard not to." She shrugged. "I trust you with my life. I have to... you've saved it a lot."

"I didn't really have a choice. If it wasn't for the headband I don't think I'd put up with you long enough to get you safely home."

"You really know how to flatter a girl." She chuckled.

"I kinda miss being bossed around by you; too scared to argue back because I'd be dead if I did... it was like we were hitched but I didn't get any."

Still without taking her eyes away from the horizon, Trip landed a punch on his forearm and tried not to find his comment so amusing. Awkward if she did, awkward if she didn't.

"Being married to you?" she joked, "Only when the world ends."

"How pissed off would you be if I pointed out it already has?"

"Not much."

"So we ain't gonna argue like an old married couple?"

"It's too hot to argue."

"Yeah, and Mark and me were having a friendly chat."

She shook her head.

"It's only because he loves me, Monkey, he's protective." She leaned on him. "Do you love me?"

"The hell-?"

"Do you love me? It's not such a hard question, right?"

"Yeah... I guess."

"Was that a yeah as in-"

"I'll let you figure it out for yourself." He sighed. "C'mon, you left the bridge fanatic all alone, who knows what he's done to camp?"

The idea of going back to the tense atmosphere was enough to set the mood back to a sombre one. Somehow moving back into a normal life was harder than they both thought. He hadn't had a 'normal' life in a while. It would be nice to return to one, especially if it was with Trip.

But he wouldn't admit it.


	4. Journey to the South

_It. Actually. Begins O.o_

_FFFFFFF- I've taken way too long to move onto the proper plot. But here it is! Enjoy ^^_

_My original reason for not updating in ages was that I had a lot of work to do with the Royal Wedding over here and both before, during and after I was mega busy. Now my reason is that I was flooded with coursework and working on something with my local theatre. So, at last, a bloody update... a very short update. I want to put this up here before I delay it any longer. It's like a teeny sneak peek... the cheese before the biscuits so you know what you'll be eating._

"If my co-ordinates are correct, the last known location of your settlement is about a day's journey if we don't stop too much." Mark mumbled, deep in thought while he and Trip stared at his bluscreen monitor and mapped out a route through the use of old satellite images and Monkey's memory.

"Yeah, we could do that." Monkey shrugged. "_Or_-"

"Oh I knew there would be an 'or'."

"You knew there'd be a better idea?" Monkey flicked at the bluscreen so that it fuzzed out of sight and Mark's impressive map was lost. He made to protest but Monkey carried on and silenced him. "We take your way and we'll find is a bunch of burnt out ruins. That was just a crossroads for us, not a settlement." He began to scratch out patterns in the sand. "There are other places... I just haven't been there in a while. We might not be let in."

"Friendly lot, just as I remember." Mark sighed. "Am I going to be thrown into a thorny bush again?"

"That was you?" Monkey blinked. "I should have recognised that stupid scream."

"I'm surprised you weren't one of the half-wits throwing me."

"Ladies, ladies, let's all be friends." Trip sighed, gently nudging Monkey's arm with her foot so he carried on scrawling the map into the sand. She'd already heard the story of the thorn bush from both of them and would bet her life they both had wildly different versions of events.

"Tell that to him, it's his lot who attacked me just because I was far more superior." Mark mumbled. It was glorious how childish both men became when their rivalry was brought to life. It would be entertaining when they didn't have a civilisation to find and people to lead.

"I dunno... people don't tend to be too friendly when you call their leader an asshole." Monkey didn't look up from his sand-map while he spoke. It was similar to that of Mark's with one exception; the southern mountain had gone from a bleak featureless landmark to a network of buildings and roads and cities. "The waterfall, right here, that's how we get in. Centuries ago the rocks were carved out and that's our home." He waited for the two of them to take it all in before sweeping one giant arm over the scrawling and erasing every trace of it.

Trip blinked.

"Aren't we going to use it..?"

"I've already told you more than I should. I know the map already, just follow me and don't ask questions. One wrong move and we'll be shot down before we even get near. It's bad enough with you two; I'm pushing my luck as it is."

"Will they take all the slaves in?"

"I wouldn't count on it."

Mark screwed his face up in preparation for a protest but Trip cut over him.

"Well... I don't know why we're still waiting."

While Mark stormed off to tell everyone to prepare, Monkey took Trip's hand in his.


	5. Snow

The golden-haired boy blinked furiously as the projectile exploded alarmingly close to his face and soft flakes of snow peppered his skin. He buffed them away with his sleeve before they started to burn. He wore a pout, approaching the stubborn resolve to give up on the game altogether if his opponent didn't start missing. It hadn't occurred to him that he could retaliate; he thought the aim of the game was to scream until everyone stopped throwing snow at you. Then you could go back home and get a warm drink of chocolate and sit by the stone furnaces until you were dry again.

For a sheltered child, this was all life needed to be. Some said it worrying how much he resented being out of his comfort zone, but who was left to scold the child? Death of unnatural causes came as a shock to people, even seven years after the ashes of the pyre had long since been blown away to the wilderness. People looked at the boy throwing a tantrum and couldn't bring themselves to deny him anything, to make up for what fate took away.

Of course, the others his age weren't aware of why he received special treatment and, in their jealousy, gave him nothing short of a hard time when they could get away with it.

"Come down, silly monkey!" a shrill voice chanted. As he clung to his pine perch, he could see a lone figure in the moonlight. "Come down!"

He clung to the trunk, hundreds of tiny needles managing to jab him through the thick furs of his coat. Nobody shouted at him for climbing trees anymore. It didn't matter how often he fell and ran back crying, nobody ever denied him his fun. Except the other kids. Why were there other kids? They took his toys, and didn't let him play with them. Their games were stupid, anyway. He never won. Why would he play if he couldn't win?

"Go 'way." He cried, his bottom lip trembling. "I don't like you."

"I'll tell Nanah!" the girl squealed. She knelt down in the snow drift to gather up another tightly packed handful of it and flung it with childlike fury. Her target cried out as it struck him in the arm and slipped down considerably before he stopped flailing and regained his vice-like grip. "I'll tell Nanah you won't play with me!"

The mountain's spoiled duo rarely saw eye-to-eye. Where he was showered with attention because his parents were gone, she received the same treatment because hers were still around. As the daughter of the fallen line of kings, she was used to having her every wish granted.

But as far as their Nanah was concerned, getting the boy to co-operate was just wishful thinking.

"I don't like you!" he began to climb up the tree again. "Go 'way."

She crossed her arms with a huff and stamped her heel down. She was buried in snow up to her knees, but she wasn't shivering.

"Don't make me tell Nanah..." she bit her lip, dangerously close to bursting into tears. They both were.

_I'll leave out excuses to try and explain the hiatus._

_~Kay_


End file.
